When I used to work at a mainstream school, we taught William Golding’s ‘Lord of the Flies’ as part of year 10 English. We used this exceptional novel to teach aspects of creative writing, such as perspective, description, and the principle of “show, don’t tell”: don’t tell the reader what’s going on, show them some important details and let them work it out for themselves.

Like all rules of writing, the rule of “show, don’t tell” can be broken by particularly great writers. But you need to learn the rules before you can break them, and when done skillfully, “show, don’t tell” can engage the reader in the construction the story, render a situation more vivid, and avoid cliché. William Golding’s mastery of “show, don’t tell” is on full display in ‘Lord of the Flies’, but in ‘The Inheritors’ it is dazzling.

‘The Inheritors’ is told from the perspective of a small band of Neanderthals who encounter Homo Sapiens for the first time. The Neanderthals are depicted as a gentle people with strong social bonds, who do have language and thought (they see “pictures” in their heads) but in a very different way from us. As such, it took me a while to get used to the narration, which mimics the non-linear thought process of the protagonist, Lok. The novel rewards perseverance, however.

As Lok watches “the new people”, he tries to understand what he sees, and the narrative plunges the reader into his confusion. When one of the new people shoots at him with a bow-and-arrow, it is described thus:

The man turned sideways in the bushes and looked at Lok along his shoulder. A stick rose upright and there was a lump of bone in the middle… The stick began to grow shorter at both ends. Then it shot out to full length again.

The dead tree by Lok’s ear acquired a voice.

“Clop!”

His ears twitched and he turned to the tree. By his face there had grown a twig: a twig that smelt of other, and of goose, and of the bitter berries that Lok’s stomach told him he must not eat.

There are similarly ingenious depictions of other early human rituals, such as drunken revelry, religious sacrifice, and slavery – all told from the perspective of creatures who have no notion of these activities, let alone words to describe them.

When Lok and another Neanderthal, Fa, creep into the new people’s camp and try some of their alcohol, they experience drunkenness and hangovers for the first time: an episode which William Golding’s daughter has suggested was drawn from her father’s own alcoholism. It is also a brilliant display of Golding’s mastery of perspective: where a lesser writer might have written “Lok fell over and crashed onto the ground”, Golding writes: “… then the earth stood up and hit his right side a thunderous blow”.

The first eleven-and-a-half chapters are told from a Neanderthal perspective, but then the last part of the eleventh chapter zooms out and watches Lok as though from far away. In the most moving part of the book, and the most brilliant example of “show, don’t tell”, we witness “the red creature” grieving for the loss of a loved one – without a single word being uttered about death, grief, or tears. I won’t give it away.

The final chapter is told from the perspective of one of the “new people”, and we are suddenly back into more familiar narrative territory – yet not necessarily happy to be there, among this species with such capacity for violence. ‘The Inheritors’ is not always an easy novel, and a times lacks the driving narrative of ‘Lord of the Flies’. But it is fascinating to witness our own species through the eyes of the gentle Neanderthals – whom the novel suggests were driven to extinction by Homo Sapiens, out of misunderstanding and fear.

A good writer is able to smoothly zoom in and zoom out of their subject matter. Zoom in, to give the reader evocative detail and compelling individual stories; zoom out, to give the reader a sense of the text’s big ideas, of its place in the canon. If done skillfully, this dance between detail and magnitude leaves the text resonating in the reader’s mind. If done poorly, the piece suffers, whether it be a novel or a magazine article: too little “zoom in” and the piece feels dry; too little “zoom out” and it feels inconsequential.

Few writers walk the tightrope between the grand and the minute as skillfully as Yuval Noah Harari. In Sapiens, he promises – and delivers – nothing short of a history of humankind. He begins with the most extreme wide-shot possible, deftly zooming in to the story of us, at this point “an animal of no significance”:

About 13.5 billion years ago, matter, energy, time, and space came into being in what is known as the Big Bang. The story of these fundamental features of our universe is called physics.

About 300,000 years after their appearance, matter and energy started to coalesce into complex structures, called atoms, which then combined into molecules. The story of atoms, molecules, and their interactions is called chemistry.

About 3.8 billion years ago, on a planet called Earth, certain molecules combined to form particularly large and intricate structures called organisms. The story of organisms is called biology.

About 70,000 years ago, organisms belonging to the species Homo Sapiens started to form even more elaborate structures called cultures. The subsequent development of these human cultures is called history.

– Sapiens, page 1

Harari’s conceptualisation of physics, chemistry, biology, and history as “stories” sets the tone for his work, which is just that – a riveting, breathtaking story, which hurtles through the annals of history at a cracking pace. He has an astonishing ability to elegantly encapsulate theories, movements, and events which elsewhere seem hopelessly complicated. Here is the reason why human beings came to dominate the globe, he gently explains. Here is the relationship between science, empire, and capitalism.

When reading parts of Sapiens that dealt with historical events I knew little about, I felt vulnerable: at the mercy of this “ruthless synthesiser”, unable to counter his streamlined narrative with my own complicating background knowledge. Nonetheless, it was difficult not to admire Harari’s sweeping approach, his seemingly effortless mastery of the interplay of forces throughout the whole of human history. He casts a brutal light on the arbitrariness of human affairs and values, nonchalantly pointing out that money, the equality of humankind, and our present-day Western emphasis on enriching experiences, are all imaginary (not fake, but constituting “inter-subjective phenomena”: existing only to the extent that a critical mass of others believe in them). Speaking of post-industrial-revolution society’s obsession with time, he observes that “nowadays, the first item of every news broadcast – more important even than the outbreak of war – is the time.” So it is! I wondered, having never given any thought to that ubiquitous beginning to the news, “It’s eight o’clock”, the Amen of our cult of time-worship.

Sapiens is enlightening, disarming, and very entertaining. It makes you think and question. That thinking and questioning should be equally applied to the book and its talented author.

It was a wonderful competition, and I’m not just saying that because I won! There are three rounds, and in each round you write a story incorporating a specified genre, character, and subject. In the first round, you have a week; in the second round, three days; and in the final round, twenty-four hours.

The tight deadlines were exactly what I needed. I have always loved writing, but as an adult I have just kept putting it off. This competition made me write regardless of how busy I was. Moreover, it forced me to stretch myself to write in genres I wouldn’t normally touch. These were my assignments:

Round 1

Genre: Political Satire

Subject: Guns

Character: A middleman

Round 2

Genre: Thriller

Subject: A water supply

Character: A park ranger

Round 3

Genre: Open

Subject: A sunrise

Character: An undertaker

During the first round, I became so immersed in my story that I wrote it whenever I had a moment: I remember balancing my laptop on my knees while I was on the train. I was thrilled simply to make it to the second round, let alone to place first overall. I will post a link to my final-round story when it goes up on the website.

For the past couple of years I’ve been teaching English and Literature at a secondary school in regional Victoria. Although I loved my job, for several reasons I decided I wanted to move back to Melbourne, and this week I started at my new school! It’s an English Language School, which is designed specifically for students who have just arrived in Australia, and who need to build up their English skills before progressing to a mainstream school. It is so much fun! I am just so immersed in planning lessons and working with these wonderful, motivated young people.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been up to! I’ll definitely start posting some ideas for the ESL classroom if there are any teachers out there who read this!

I talk low, just above silenceSo that even my other ear can’t hear.The earth sleeps in the open and lingers in my headWith the rigor of asphodels.I’ve re-peopled a few deserts and walked a lotAnd now I lie down in my fatigue and my joy— Those wracks thrown ashore by Summer waves.In unknown countries, bits of me are seeding.Boughs of my tenderness, they giveOases where days are merry-making orchards,Where man drinks amniotic vigor.Happiness is falling in the public domain.

by Anna Greki

Translated by Lynda Chouiten

Anna Greki was born in Batna in 1931 to a family of French origin. Jailed and tortured on account of her involvement in the struggle for Algerian independence, she eventually completed her studies and worked as a schoolteacher, before dying in childbirth at the age of 35.

I came across this poem in French and was thinking of translating it myself, but then I found this translation by Lynda Chouiten. I like how she has rendered the poem into plainly-spoken English, lending the poem’s voice a touching simplicity and authenticity. I wouldn’t have done that to the same extent: I probably would have translated the first line as “I speak softly, just above the silence” in order to capture the whispering quality of the original’s alliterative title. But the more I considered Chouiten’s translation, the more I liked the simplicity of the monosyllabic opening clause “I talk low”. I also loved the line:

In unknown countries, bits of me are seeding.

I would have automatically translated the word “morceaux” as “pieces”, but I loved the ever-so-slightly bitter and even pathetic overtones of “bits”: a bit is worth less than a piece, emphasizing the violence of the process of fragmentation.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by the Gawain Poet, translated by Simon Armitage

This week I spent a couple of days in Lorne, a lovely town on the Great Ocean Road in Victoria, Australia. My parents go there every year, and whenever possible I try to join them.

When in Lorne I never miss the chance to visit the wonderful Lorne Beach Books. I was trying to find some other books by Kate Milford because I’m currently reading and enjoying Greenglass House, but they didn’t have any in stock. Instead, I bought Brand New Ancients, by performance poet Kate Tempest.

Tempest has been a huge name in Australia since her appearance on Q&A last year. She is a rapper, poet, musician, and novelist who won the Ted Hughes Poetry Prize in 2013 for Brand New Ancients, a narrative poem set to music which follows the fates of two families in London. The title page proclaims that “this poem was written to be read aloud”, but to be honest I read it from cover to cover silently and found it compelling and devastating – so much so that sometimes I needed to put it down.

I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting. I was having a discussion with my friend recently about rap music (about which I know nada), and he was arguing that rappers need to be more skilled than poets, because they have to weave magic with words and set it all to a beat. Sure, I thought, but the songs you’re making me listen to would hardly stand up as poems alone. Poems on the page have nowhere to hide: an awkward rhyme or or tired image can’t be glossed over through a nice musical phrase. I thought that Tempest’s poetry might be similar – average on paper, electrifying in performance – but I found the words themselves pretty electrifying, to the point that when I did listen to excerpts of the performance, I didn’t feel that it added much. I didn’t need, for instance, swelling strings and Tempest’s rising voice to conjure up a sense of menace in the scene where Gloria is attacked, because that menace is already conveyed by the words. Perhaps it would have been different if I’d listened to the performance first, before reading the transcript.

I didn’t love every moment of Brand New Ancients. At times I found it a bit preachy – songs that repeatedly instruct the listener “You gotta…” or “We need to…” have always rubbed me up the wrong way, and this poem was no different. And all that preaching about our need to reconnect with our mythical roots is unnecessary, because the story speaks for itself. In the often-tragic tale of Brian, Clive, Tommy and the other men and women who drift in and out of their lives, we feel keenly the disconnect between contemporary society and the beings who populate it – beings with ancient needs, drives, and desires. This is brilliantly captured in the cover artwork by Christina Hardinge, which depicts ancient-looking figures sporting the traps of modernity and zombie-like gaits to match:

Tempest’s brand of poetry is often touted as new and unique (and it is unique), but of course performance poetry is as old as poetry itself (critics of Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize might disagree). While in Lorne I also visited the little second-hand bookshop below, and picked up a copy of a very different performance poem: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in a modern English translation by Simon Armitage.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a brilliant narrative poem from the 14th century, written by an anonymous author in a Northern dialect of Middle English. The poem begins during a Christmas feast in Camelot, which is interrupted when an enormous knight, completely green in both attire and skin, walks into the hall. The stranger challenges the knights to a bizarre game, and Gawain – nephew of King Arthur – accepts the challenge. A fantastic adventure ensues, and the plot is riveting in its own right: masterfully shaped and containing a fantastic twist at the end. But Gawain is also a deeply complex poem which invites a multitude of interpretations: it has been read as a Christian allegory, a romance, a treatise on the nature of value, a battle of the sexes, and an exploration of man’s relationship with nature.

I am taking liberties a little by describing Gawain as a performance poem. The gorgeously-decorated manuscript in which Gawain was found along with three other poems suggests that it was also intended to be enjoyed on the page. However, during that time it was common for poems and stories to be read aloud for entertainment, and there is certainly much to be gained from reciting Gawain aloud. Simon Armitage has prioritized the poem’s alliteration in his translation, and argues that this technique is most powerful when read aloud:

On the subject of alliteration, it should be mentioned that within each line it is the stressed syllables which count. A line like ‘and retrieves the intestines in time-honoured style’ might appear not to alliterate at first glance. But read it out loud, and the repetition of that ‘t’ sound – the tut-tutting, the spit of revulsion, the squirming of the warm, wet tongue as it makes contact with the roof of the mouth – seems to suggest a physical relationship with the action being described… This is a translation not only for the eye, but for the ear and the voice as well (from the introduction to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight).

I already owned a copy of Armitage’s translation, but what I stumbled upon in the bookstore was not just any old copy, but a stunningly illustrated Folio Society edition, in perfect condition! A poem for the eye indeed!